Tag Archives for american airlines.
We’re not just looking at a new seat, but also more premium seats. I wrote last fall that American Airlines is planning to put more business class seats on planes. That’s true both for their widebodies and also their Airbus A319s.
We’re getting some sense now just what this means from two separate recent reports that I’ve confirmed.
American Airlines pilots, as a group, aren’t happy. Their union advises people not to come work for the airline. Usually unions want.. more members, not fewer.
In Los Angeles, though, their pilots have a special beef: they don’t get to fly as many places as they used to. In particular, widebody pilots have almost nowhere to go.
American is blaming an inability for crew to even get in touch with the airline on weather when this has happened before and when they’ve promised to fix it so it does not happen again before.
American promised to improve on this a year ago. They didn’t. They said hotel booking desks would get staffed up – both more staff at their outsourced vendor, and also augmenting that with American Airlines staff as well. Now they’ve outlined a four-step plan to avoid crew getting stuck sleeping in airports again.
Before the pandemic one of the American Airlines breakfasts on regional jets was a smoked salmon plate. American’s regional jets don’t have ovens in the galleys so it was a perfect meal to serve cold. I always thought that it was a better choice than an egg dish with sausage on mainline.
In the fall I had a smoked salmon plate on my Los Angeles – Honolulu flight. I was thrilled at the choice, but there was no tomato and I was given a miniature bagel. I’ve often criticized American Airlines for failing to pay attention to the details. On this flight they’d really figured it out.
American Airlines stopped catering the espresso machines on board their Boeing 777, Boeing 787, and Airbus A321T aircraft during the pandemic. The “frothing wands, cups, saucers, brewing pods” were taken off of planes, according to the airline. Fortunately espresso drinks are back!
The Justice Department’s case against American-JetBlue was weak. A Spirit acquisition could make it stronger. But it’s still not a slam dunk. The Justice Department might say to JetBlue ‘drop the American Airlines alliance as a condition of our approval of the Spirit acquisition.’
If you’ll pay for up to 4 Uber charges using a Mastercard you can earn American Airlines redeemable miles and loyalty (elite qualifying) points for the transactions.
American Airlines sent out a memo to cabin crew this week threatening to terminate them if they aren’t near the airport when called to work a flight while on reserve. The airline is correct on the contract language and requirements, but managed to offend many of their crew who felt blamed for the airline’s operational problems over the last several days.
Pre-order meals return for domestic first class (special meals come back next month). Second beverage service on longer coach flights comes back – American had dropped this as a sop to its flight attendants union back in January. Transcon flights get new meal improvements especially.
This past weekend American’s operation melted down, along with other airlines including Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue. Once again the flight attendants union reports that crew had no hotels, and even worse that the airline – which was cancelling flights due to lack of crew – didn’t even keep track of where their flight attendants were to reassign them to trips to get customers home.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
